Gareth Prytherch interviewed by BBC Wales on his POW experience
 GARETH PRYTHERCH (R) at a reunion in 1974 in Morlaix, France, with two of his former POW friends, Keith Butters of London and Jean Le Bras of Morlaix.
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By EIFION WILLIAMS
Gareth Prytherch is a retired Vancouver Secondary School teacher and a long-time member of the Vancouver Welsh Society.
As a young airman he and his crew were shot down over Germany and he spent almost three years from 1943 to 1945 in Dulag Luft. Stalag 1Vb prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
The following is an article by David Llewelyn Williams in the Cambrian News, the Welsh Society newsletter, on a recent interview given by Gareth to BBC Wales.
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In late January I was contacted by BBC Cymru, who wished to contact Gareth with a view to interviewing him about his experiences as a prisoner-of-war during the Second World War. After talking to Gareth, I passed on his contact information and in due course he went to a studio in downtown Vancouver to be interviewed.
On March 14, I listened to host Dei Tomos’ 5:30 PM Sunday program on Radio Cymru, which played at 10:30 AM Vancouver time. Soon I heard Gareth being interviewed in Welsh about his wartime experiences.
Gareth’s account in English of his prisoner-of-war experiences can be found on the war archive online site: www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/gareth.prytherch.htm.
The site also includes a photograph of a reunion between Gareth and two of his closest comrades, one from England and one from Brittany, and a painting of Gareth as a prisoner by a fellow Dutch POW artist. The painting is now in the Rijkmuseum, Amsterdam.
The interviewer, Dei Tomos, did not include all that Gareth told him and some of us remember the Sgwrs (Discussion) by Gareth at the Welsh Society’s Sunday Service in November, 2005, where he exhorted us not to categorize people.
He told us, for example, of the kindness of the German mother who prepared a meal for him when he was first captured and brought it to his cell at considerable personal risk. He contrasted this with the Welsh nationalist who worked as an enemy agent with the Red Cross because he believed it offered the best chance of freedom for Wales.
Gareth Prytherch’s memories offer a rare glimpse at a detailed and personal human level into the war and can be read time and time again.
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